The Art Of Contentment

Contentment is the greatest wealth.  If you happen to be discontented with your life right now, I would assume that you have never encountered these words before. While happiness is something that we want to achieve in this life, it is something that we can never fully attain. Contentment, on the other hand, is readily available to us and all we need to do is take a hold of it. There is nothing wrong with striving to be happy, but happiness is fleeting and can go up or down each moment. Contentment, on the other hand, is more stable. It allows you to get rid of things from your life and still feel happy. In other words, contentment is a far better goal to achieve than happiness. The question is how to master the art of contentment. Here are a few steps:

Take Time To Meditate

A lot of people are discontented because they fail to take time to step back and consider everything that is going on in their lives. By taking time to sit back, relax, and meditate, you give yourself the opportunity to reflect, which in turn gives you the power to think rationally whenever a problem arises. It also helps you understand and realise that true happiness cannot be found in external things such as eating, shopping, partying, or even working. Meditation can be done in a number of ways, from praying, to writing in your journal, to going on long walks once in a while, to going on retreats.

One Step At A Time

If you have lived your entire life being discontented most of the time, it is going to be a challenge for you to change your mindset. You have to realise that it is going to take time before you can fully grasp what contentment is all about. For this reason, be patient with yourself and take it a step at a time. You do not build trust with someone right away instead, you start in small steps. In the same manner, avoid taking huge steps, but do the little things first. Be faithful doing the little things first, and see the trust building up gradually. Over time, you will open yourself up to more, and before you know it, feeling content and happy despite your circumstances will not be that difficult anymore.

Stop Feeling Bad About Yourself

One of the biggest problems for finding contentment in this life is having ideals. Ideals are not bad, but when we constantly feel bad about ourselves for not being able to meet our ideals, that is when the problem comes in. Our ideals usually come from what we see on TV, read online, and mostly from what we see in our news feed. We compare ourselves to our friends who have bigger houses and  cars, and then we start feeling bad and wished we also had what they have. What is interesting is, that most of these people we compare ourselves to also struggle with comparing themselves to others, perhaps even to us! Once you let go of your ideals and unreal expectations in life, you will start feeling good about yourself, and that is a good place to start to find contentment.

Find Opportunities To Give

“If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion.” – Tenzin Gyatzo

Nothing could be further from the truth of what the 14^th Dalai Lama said. Many times, we feel discontented with our lives because we fail to see that there are other people who are less fortunate than we are. We think and feel that we are deprived just because our neighbours’ houses and cars are much bigger, or because our friends get to go places when the furthest we can travel to is the grocery store. However, once we realise that we actually have more capacity to give than we think, we will feel joy and happiness that we can never have by acquiring more stuff. Instead of thinking that you are poor and feeling depressed about the idea all the time, why not find opportunities to give? It does not necessarily have to be in the form of money. You can give a hug to a friend who is feeling alone. You can give food and clothing to the homeless man on the street. You can offer to babysit even just for an hour for the single mom next door. You can offer to teach a few unfortunate children in your community for free. You actually have more to give than you think. All you need to do is to stop looking at yourself and start opening your eyes and your heart to the circumstances around you.

Learn To Appreciate The Little Things

Happiness is a choice, they all say, and that is true. If you want to have a life of contentment, you have to learn how to appreciate the little things. The fact that you are alive right now and are able to read up to this part should be reason enough for you to be happy and content. One practical example of appreciating the little things in life is to simply be thankful for the air you breathe. Oxygen is free, so being thankful that you do not have to buy air in order to breathe and stay alive is one way to show appreciation. Another example is to just be thankful for the people who love you. You have your family, your friends and colleagues, not a lot of people have that privilege.

The principles in this article may not apply to everyone, but for most people, I believe that they will. Happiness is a choice and contentment is the greatest wealth. Choose happiness and you will realise that you are the richest person in the world. Choose to be content, and you will be the happiest person on the planet.

With thanks to Eric James 
https://servingjoy.com/how-to-master-the-art-of-contentment/

Emotions Are Energy In Motion

Have you ever experienced an upward and downward spiral of emotions in the matter of a few minutes/hours/days? If this is a frequent occurrence, one minute clinging on tightly to upward feelings of joy, before suddenly letting go and plunging downwards into a pit of dread and fear.

Do not worry, we have sadly all been there.

But it does not have to be that way. With a simple change of perception, it is possible to lesser the power emotions have over you.

What Is Energy In Motion?

Let us start at the beginning.

The Latin word for emotion is ’emotere’, which literally means energy in motion.

Believe it or not, emotional energy in itself is neutral. That is to say, it is only once we react to the sensation (expansion/contraction) in our body created by the emotion, that we interpret a desired response (thought),based on like or dislike, and give power to the feeling through attachment and labelling (reaction). In most cases, this results in a vocal outburst, giving even more strength to the ‘reality’ of this emotion.

Without an interpretation, all we are left with is moving energy in the body that resembles expansion (usually associated with good feelings) and contraction (bad feelings).

Given that fact, we need to learn to treat this fluid energy with respect and allow it to move and change as it is designed to do. Like everything else, these sensations are impermanent.

“Emotions are like a wave, constantly rising and falling. They are part of a much bigger ocean worth noticing.”

The mistake lies with labelling an energy in motion as good or bad. If we can recognise that every feeling will pass in time, attaching a reaction is pointless. It is pure and simply wasted energy. Instead, we must stay out of the thoughts and strengthen our observation muscle by staying with the sensations. This constant flow of reliable information (in the form of sensation) is a gateway to who you really are at the deepest level.

Voicing the story of how you feel is powerful, but only to a certain point. Though it is in itself a release, the next level can only be reached when you allow yourself to feel your emotions without justifying or sharing them with others.

By bringing a mindful observation to the sensations, you are basically allowing your body to communicate with your mind. It has something to show you about how you feel at your deepest level, and only when your mind can stop and listen, will it invite the energy to be released. Otherwise you are affectively ignoring that inner voice, that knowing.

You know that old saying “listen to your gut”? It turns out it truly does have a lot of important things to say.

Learn to listen, accept and release the e-motion and an internal sigh of relief will come over your entire body and mind.

Get to a point where you can feel an uncomfortable emotion and sit with it anyway, do not judge yourself, ride the wave and watch it slow down.

But the ego is crafty, it wants to stop every energy in motion in its tracks. Using the monkey mind as its unknowing slave, the ego loves to cling to sensations and use them to help define a sense of self and strengthen this identity we have become so attached to.

This e-motion becomes a thought. This thought is then aligned with good or bad. Suddenly our words, overall mood and actions become defined by this thought reaction to a sensation. Good work, ego.

So you could argue that this is a good thing if the sensation happens to be expanding, releasing feelings of happiness. We are all searching for happiness right?

The problem is, if you allow expansion to instantly affect your mood (via thought and story), you are also going to be affected when contraction once again kicks in. To become enlightened from blind reaction, one must cut ties from old habit patterns created to all energy in motion.

It is important to remember that we are not aiming to ignore and suppress any emotion, but learn how to affectively feel and release them instead.

We want to listen to our gut; tap in to how we really feel about a given situation without allowing our monkey mind to take control and swerve in all manner of directions. Before you know it, you are completely lost and unsure where you started.

This is of course easier said than done, and it takes time.

Yet being aware of sensations is the first step towards increasing your emotional intelligence.

How to Deal with Energy In Motion

Here are a few ways in which to practise the art of energy in motion observation:

Find time in the day to sit and meditate, even just 5 minutes will help. Observe any sensation that arises with pure curiosity and zero judgement. It is the first step to acceptance and over time the pattern of reaction becomes weaker. 

Allow a moment of space between a strong emotion and reaction. This is where thought is encouraged as a means of analysing the feeling. Simple deep breaths or taking yourself away from the situation at hand to think through the sensation rather than react can really help in better understanding where it came from.

Label the feeling, but do not attach to it. For instance, if you notice a feeling of guilt, think “this thought/feeling is linked to guilt”, observe and at some point it will pass. By noticing and watching this process play out, attachment is avoided and the energy fails to take control.

Talk out loud to yourself about how you feel. Sometimes this is easier than listening to the voice in your head. See it as self compassion, lending an ear to your body to find out why you feel this way. At the end of the day nobody else truly knows how you are feeling, and so nobody else can truly help you to feel better.

Talk it out and let it go. Once you feel you have properly understood the emotion through observation and analysis, feel free to share your feelings with someone close to you. But do not do so with the intention of receiving an answer. Advice is great, but by sharing your feelings along with an already discovered meaning (done so by yourself), you will naturally release the energy and let it go.

With time you will begin to realise that every emotion, or energy in motion, you experience is generated from within and so therefore can only be dealt with from within. External stimuli can only affect you if you let it. This is, unfortunately, a hard-wired habit pattern we all fall prey to, because it is all we have ever known growing up. We react based on what happens outside of us, and allow it to fully control how we think and feel on the inside.

Be patient, persistant and loving with yourself. It takes time to tame that monkey mind and strength to look within.

Emotions are always going to be there and that is okay. It is how we deal with them that makes all the difference.

"With your mind power, your determination, your instinct, and the experience as well, you can fly very high." - Ayrton Senna

With thanks to Kelly  http://blueyedview.com/energy-in-motion/

Maintaining Your Re-Solutions

We have all done it, we make New Year resolutions, maybe struggle to keep them for a few days, make ourselves miserable and then lapse back into our old habits.

Sure, we keep a few of these resolutions during our life but, for most, it is a losing battle. Now there is a vital formula that can ensure that you can keep every resolution without fail.

We could all benefit from this simple procedure, the key lies in the world ‘resolution’. When we make these promises to ourselves, we should drop the ‘re’ bit of the word and concentrate on the solution.

Many people benefit from this simple change to their thinking. Consider why people make resolutions. It is usually because there is some aspect of their life that they want to change for the better. Then, instead of focusing on the great benefits that they will achieve, they focus on what they are giving up so, of course they fail.

In this life you attract whatever it is that you think about the most. If you think about negative words like giving up, stopping, doing less or changing something that you have enjoyed for years, then it is inevitable that your subconscious will rebel to ensure that it does not happen.

Instead of thinking about resolutions, think about solutions. Think about how you will look, feel and sound when you have found the solution. Instead of thinking about what you may be giving up, think about what you will gain. Remember too that there is no success or failure, there is only a result. Do not beat yourself up if the result is not what you planned, just change something and start again.

Here are some pointers about why so many people get results that they see as failure. There are two main reasons. The first is that you try to change the habits of a lifetime overnight and the human mind and body does not work like that. The other is that you attempt to do it alone. The help and support of a nonjudgmental and uncritical third party is crucial to a good outcome.

Many people think that setting a resolution is all that it needs. It is important to take time to fully appreciate why you have chosen a certain resolution and to examine your commitment to the change. Then  define strategies for creating the change with small action steps that will gradually bring you closer to your goals. 

Achieving solutions begins with setting them correctly and then having support to make them happen in a timescale that the body and mind can and will accept.

New Year solutions are great if they get you thinking about your life. Remember, you can start work on a new solution at any time. The power of the personal change is just too good to be limited to the first few days of the year and it really is possible to keep every resolution without fail.

Copyright The Coaching Academy

Wishing you a Happy Prosperous New Year

A Time For Special Relationships

Christmas is for many overwhelming and stressful, presents and food to be bought, family gatherings to be arranged. It is therefore a time when relationships are foremost on their minds. But for some, it is a time of deception, when the printed words of peace and love are in direct opposition to what they really feel inside.

“At this time of year, any relationships that are under strain may totally split asunder. As families gather together old animosities and rivalries can bubble to the surface. The mature approach is to just let them go but it is not easy. It takes two people to have a disagreement. If one of them (you) decides that life is too short and makes a personal commitment to let the real happiness and peace that is Christmas become a reality, then there is no argument. There is no point in winning a series of battles if you can simply end the war”.

Now is the time to review relationships at home, work, and in a social environment, to create a strategy for repairing any relationships that are suspect and terminating those that are beyond repair. It takes inner strength to make the decisions and the commitment. Even small achievements can create their motivation. “If you use your energy to perpetuate a feeling of grudge, envy or hurt, then you are using energy that could, and should be directed to more positive things – like building yourself the life that you truly desire”.

When repairing relationships there is no blame, no right and no wrong. There is simply an outcome or result that arises from an action. If you can learn the actions that create harmony and peace, then the joy of Christmas really will, as the cards say, stay with you throughout the rest of the year. If you want to change somebody else the only place you can begin is with changing yourself. And, the only time you can start is right now”.

Copyright the Coaching Academy

Happy Christmas - Happy Hanukkah - Happy Holidays  

Mastering The Mind

To enjoy good health, to bring true happiness to one's family, to bring peace to all, one must first discipline and control one's own mind. - Buddha

You may have tried to control your thoughts at one time or another. With the aid of self help, perhaps you have really tried to “Be Positive” and “Show Negativity the Door.” And this may have even worked for a while. But sooner or later, you probably found yourself back at the starting point.

There is another way to become the CEO of your own mind, skillfully directing it to live in harmony with the other players of self, body, and spirit. If you follow the following steps, you will become the master of  YOU in no time.

Listen and Acknowledge

Like all good leaders, you are going to have to listen to your disgruntled "employee" and acknowledge that you are taking its message seriously. Minds, like people, can relax and let go when they feel heard and understood. Practice gratitude and thank your mind for its contribution. For example: “Thank you, mind, for reminding me that if I do not succeed in making more sales, I might get fired.” “Thank you for telling me that I may always be alone and never find love and have a family.” “These are important areas of life, and I need to pay attention to them, and do my best to take advantage of every opportunity that comes my way. I also need to learn from past experiences, so I do not keep making the same mistakes”.

Make Peace With Your Mind

You may not like what your mind does or the way it conducts itself. In fact, all that negativity can be downright irritating sometimes. But the fact is, you are stuck with it and you cannot (and most likely would not want to) just lobotomize it away. In the book The Happiness Trap, Dr. Russ Harris uses the example of the Israelis and the Palestinians to illustrate your relationship with your mind’s negative thoughts. These two old enemies may not like each other’s way of life, but they are stuck with each other. If they wage war on each other, the other side retaliates, and more people get hurt and buildings destroyed. When that occurs, they have a lot less energy to focus on building the health and happiness of their societies.

Just as living in peace would allow these nations to build healthier and more prosperous societies, so would making peace with your mind. Accepting that negative thoughts and feelings will be there, and that you cannot control them, will allow you to focus on your actions in the present moment, so that you can move ahead with your most important goals without getting all fouled up. You do not necessarily have to like the thoughts or agree with them, you just have to let them be there in the background of your mind, while you go out and get things done.

Realise Your Thoughts Are Just Thoughts

Most of the time we do not “see” our minds. They just feel like part of us. Dr. Steve Hayes, the founder of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, uses the concept of being “fused with your thoughts” to illustrate this relationship. To be fused means to be stuck together, undifferentiated. You feel like your thoughts and feelings are YOU, and so you accept them unconditionally as the truth without really looking at them. Such as thinking: "I am a failure and boring therefore I must be a failure and boring". Then the next minute thinking "I am feeling wonderful”. This kind of simplistic logic seems to prevail because we cannot see our own minds, so we have difficulty stepping outside of ourselves and getting an objective observer’s perspective.

In actuality, our thoughts are passing, mental events, influenced by our moods, states of hunger or tiredness, physical health, hormones, the weather, what we watched on TV last night, what we ate for dinner, what we learned as children, and so on. They are like mental habits. And, like any habits, they can be healthy or unhealthy. They also, like other habits, take time to change. Just like a couch potato cannot get up and run a marathon right away, we cannot magically turn off our spinning negative thought/feeling cycles without repeated practice and considerable effort. And even then, our overactive mind will still send us the negative stuff sometimes. 

Observe Your Own Mind

The saying “know thine enemy” is also applicable to our relationship with our own mind. Just like a good leader spends his time walking through the offices, getting to know the employees, so do we need to devote time to getting to know how our mind works day to day. Call it mindfulness, meditation, or quiet time. Time spent observing your mind is as important as time spent exercising. When you try to focus your mind on the in and out rhythm of your breath, or on the trees and flowers when you walk in nature, what does your mind do? If it is like mine, it wanders all over the place, mostly bringing up old worries or unsolved problems from the day. And, if left unchecked, it can take you out of the peacefulness of the present moment, and into a spiral of worry, fear, and judgment.

Mindfulness involves not only noticing where your mind goes when it wanders, but also gently bringing it back to focus on breathing, eating, walking, loving, or working. When you do this repeatedly over months or years, you begin to retrain your runaway mind. Like a good CEO, you begin to know when your mind is checked out or spinning its wheels, and you can gently guide it to get back with the program. When it tries to take off on its own, you can gently remind it that it is an interdependent and essential part of the whole enterprise of YOU.

Retrain Your Mind To Rewire Your Brain

There is an old, and rather wise, saying: “We are what we repeatedly do.” To this, I would add, “We become what we repeatedly think.” Over long periods, our patterns of thinking become etched into the billions of neurons in our brains, connecting them together in unique, entrenched patterns. When certain brain pathways, connections between different components or ideas, are frequently repeated, the neurons begin to “fire” or transmit information together in a rapid, interconnected sequence. Once the first thought starts, the whole sequence gets activated.

Autopilot is great for driving a car, but no so great for emotional functioning. For example, you may have deep seated fears of getting close to people because you were mistreated as a child. To learn to love, you need to become aware of the whole negative sequence and how it is biasing your perceptions, label these reactions as belonging to the past, and refocus your mind on present moment experience. Over time, you can begin to change the wiring of your brain so your prefrontal cortex (the executive center that is responsible for setting, planning, and executing goals), is more able to influence and shut off your rapidly firing, fear based mind (emotion control center). And, this is exactly what brain imaging studies on effects of mindfulness therapy have shown.

Practise Self Compassion

The pioneer of self compassion research, Dr. Kristin Neff, described this concept as “A healthier way of relating to yourself.” While we cannot easily change the gut level feelings and reactions that our minds and bodies produce, we can change how we respond to these feelings. Most of us were taught that vulnerable feelings are signs of weakness, to be hidden from others at all costs. But this is  wrong! Authors such as Dr. Brene Brown provide us with a convincing, research based argument, that expressing your vulnerability can be a source of strength and confidence, if properly managed. 

When we judge our feelings, we lose touch with the benefits of those feelings. They are valuable sources of information about our reactions to events in our lives, and they can tell us what is most meaningful and important to us. Emotions are signals telling us to reach out to for comfort or to take time out to rest and replenish. Rather than criticising ourselves, we can learn new ways of supporting ourselves in our suffering. We may deliberately seek out inner and outer experiences that bring us joy or comfort. Memories of happy times with people we love, the beauty of nature, or creative self expression. Connecting with these resources can help us navigate the difficult feelings while staying grounded in the present.

To be a successful CEO of your own mind, you need to listen, get to know your "employee", acknowledge its contribution, realise its nature, make peace with it, implement a retraining or employee development program, and treat it kindly. It will repay you with a lifetime of loyalty and service to the values and goals that you most cherish.

With thanks to Melanie Greenberg Ph.D

https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/the-mindful-self-express/201304/become-the-ceo-your-own-brain-in-six-easy-steps